1,630 researchers have been selected to benefit from the individual 2020 fellowships awarded by the EU under the ‘Marie Skłodowska-Curie’ Action programme (MSCA), the European Commission announced on Monday 8 February.
These 1,630 fellowships, with a total value of €328 million, are therefore the last MSCA individual fellowships to be awarded under the EU’s Framework Programme for Innovation and Research, Horizon 2020.
The MSCA Individual Fellowships are awarded to researchers who hold a PhD and wish to carry out a research project abroad. The projects selected here focus on topics such as climate change, health, migration, cancer, smart cities or soil and ocean health.
The European Commissioner for Innovation and Research, Mariya Gabriel, said she was “delighted” that 46 fellowships have been awarded through the pilot action ‘Widening Fellowships’ to researchers from countries “currently less represented in the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions”.
These ‘Widening Fellowships’ aimed to provide additional support to researchers of all nationalities applying for a research project in countries with weak R&I performance. This is in order to bridge the “mobility gap across Europe” and to overcome the “discrepancies between European countries in their ability to attract funding” observed by the European Commission. (Original version in French by Agathe Cherki)